MSP - ATL, ATL - LGW

"And I think it's gonna BEEEE a long, long time, 'till touch down BRINGS me round again to find, I'm not the MAN they think I am at ALL...oh naw naw naw...Imma rocketman. Rocketmaaaaaaaan."
-Elton John, Rocketman

Everything is a hazy fog as I sit down for my first opportunity of non-movement in the last I-don’t-know-how-many hours (my best estimation is about 26). How did I get to this state? Glad you asked…

Left my adopted home of Minneapolis-St. Paul at roughly 2:00 PM after a wonderful and beautiful morning, breakfast, and send-off by the wife-ish. The plane trip to Atlanta was nothing to terrible, other than a grade-A craptastic landing that felt like the pilot was trying to do some kind of trick maneuver where he balanced the jet on two wheels than tried to balance the plane on the other two and so on.

Atlanta Int. wasn’t too bad except for an unforeseen gate change that made for some last minute plane catching by two of our group.

During flight from Atlanta to Gatwick Int. in London, which departed around 7:20 PM and arrived around 8:20 AM (factor in a 5 hour time difference), I had meant to sleep the whole way, but the idea that when one is traveling, one doesn’t always know when one’s next meal is going to be trumped my good sense (or maybe it was the one complimentary beer), and I ended up not trying to get to sleep until later than I had planned, pretty much at the same time that everyone else settled down.

That was when total scale of the horrible situation I was in became apparent.

With everyone quieting down and to sleep or to watch the crap movie, I realized that there was soft music coming from somewhere and try as I might I wasn’t able to not hear it either. Paul Simon, Outkast, Stevie Wonder, the Blues Brothers and several others were doing there best to keep me awake, but I was overcoming there advances on my sleep when a shrieking voice made the K.O. punch made my eyes go wide.

DOOOOOOOWN TOOOOOOOWN. THINGS ARE SO GREAT WHEN YOU’RE DOOOOOOOWN TOOOOOOOWN. IT GETS SO LATE WHEN YOU’RE DOOOOOOOWN TOOOOOOOWN………..

…and it wasn’t just once, no, the music was on a 45 (or thereabouts) minute loop and the hideous wake up greeting would belt me over the head time after time. This went on for 8 hours, so I figure I heard the song about 12 times. I was fairly ambivalent about the song before this trip, but after this flight…I don’t ever want to go downtown ever again.

When we arrived, we took a charter bus to the hostel. The ride took about an hour and a half, and had I closed my eyes, I would have been able to experience the entire trip with my eyes closed due to my trip-mates reading out loud every sign and billboard that they saw. (Now, they were excited, so I can’t get too mad at them, but it was more than a little aggravating.) By this time the sheer amount of movement I had undergone up to that point was starting to make my stomach queasy and all I wanted to do was take a nap; however, sleep would have to wait.

In order to make everyone suffer the jetlag now, rather than throughout the next week; the group was assigned to go out and find a list of things and get a feel for the surrounding area…I hope I didn’t see anything interesting, because my head felt like rubber rather than a sponge and I didn’t really absorb any of the experience.

Which leads me up to now. I know it might sound like I’m moaning and complaining, but I imagine it’s just the jetlag and the ringing ears. A full night’s sleep (my first in Europe) and everything will be peachy, I’m sure.